John Watson, the Doctor
by TYRider
Summary: A grieving John Watson finds a familiar watch and everything changes. Takes place shortly after the Fall. Completed oneshot. A/N: I uploaded this earlier but the site removed all of the formatting. I was informed it was unreadable, took it down, and this is the correct version being uploaded.


**A/N: I've had this plotbunny hopping around the recesses of my mind for ages. I finally wrangled it onto paper. I hope you like it! Let me know what you think!**

John felt wrung out when he stumbled into the desk chair back at 221B. He couldn't sit in his usual seat, couldn't bear to look at Sherlock's empty one. If he hadn't been so shattered he probably wouldn't have come back to the flat at all.

Loss was not an unfamiliar emotion for the veteran. At times he wondered if it was his default setting.

Until the funeral he'd felt numb more than anything. It wasn't until he visited the grave earlier in the day with Mrs. Hudson that the pain started up in earnest. The ache crept into his chest, settling around his heart like a serpent, coiled tight. It pressed on his breastbone with every inhale.

Losing a good friend always hurt. John would know; loss was one of the only constants in his life. Losing a friend that was like an amputation. Without anesthetic and performed by a madman with a blunt object. The loss was tangible and it hurt like everything.

The ex-soldier interlocked his fingers and slowly placed them on the desk in front of him. Like metal drawn to a magnet, his forehead bowed forward until it resting on his joined fists. Silvered-blond hair fell across his brow.

Eyes closed, lids scrunched painfully before the wrinkles slowly smoothed themselves out and he fell asleep. With sleep came a dream.

Footsteps pounded first earth and then familiar pavement at a steady pace until the sound of running was all he could hear. It reverberated in the confines of his mind like the beating of a drum, like a doubled pulse in the dark.

Then everything shifted and out of the black nothingness sprang everything. Stars burned to life and died and were reborn. They filled the sky like flakes of gold dust. They burned and hummed. Planets wandered in and out of the dark in an intricate dance. And in his veins his blood sang wild and strong, keeping pace with the sounds of footsteps on London streets.

He felt it here, too; the sting of loss. There was the inversed image of flames burned into his retinas and the the dry smell of smoke on his clothes, the tang of blood in the air. There was a repressed itch in the back of his mind that made him think of memories that didn't bear thinking about.

He ran from the fire and blood and the pain of loss. In a watery, shifting dream-scape he ran and ran and ran without stopping until he no longer recognized himself.

Things slowed down and John started to take in his surroundings. He watched them solidify around him. There for an instant and gone again before he could grasp any of it. In that crazy, tilted, stop-start way that dreams flow, he saw himself, then London, stars, ash, a series of unrecognizable scenes that he knew but didn't, and then London again. They kept coming, never stopping, too fast to actually adsorb.

And there was laughter. Shared smiles, quick glances, dark looks, brooding moments, fish and chips and tea and running. There were long stretches of memory, whole lives' worth of his defined by other people.

A few constants played with his senses. The feel of warm wood and cool metal under his fingers, the sound of ancient words in his ears and on his tongue, the smell of dust after rain filled his nostrils.

The memories were as numerous and unreachable as the stars were before, but just as there.

Strewn throughout everything was a strain of loss that was painfully similar to the cutting whine of Sherlock's violin. There was the the fight and flight feeling in his gut, the urge to protect and guard, the overwhelming to need to fix what was broken.

In his dream, he was himself; the wounded veteran that fought the good fight, the loyal friend, the broken man. But more than anything he was healer, doctor.

John woke with a start. Gasping like a man half drowned he sat up. He frowned and rubbed at his face. The dream slipped farther and farther away the more he tried to grasp it and keep it at the front of his mind.

What he could do was hear something. The sound was both foreign and familiar. Soft ticking like footsteps was emanating from the desk in front of him. He felt his heart give an uncomfortable lurch in his chest, an irresistible pull.

When he opened the drawer he could have sworn he could hear singing, quiet as secrets and tinged with the scent of old wood and a sense of blue that got into your blood.

Nestled in among the various papers and writing utensils was an old fob watch. Its case was the color of faraway stars and carved with rune-like circles. The watch gave off the uncanny impression of being alive.

John wasn't surprised to see the watch there. After all, he'd had it for as long as he could remember. Though, oddly enough, he couldn't really remember ever having it. His frown deepened.

Seeing it filled him with relief, the kind you feel when you find something so long lost that you've given up ever finding it. The relief was tempered with a sense of regret, too.

Tension made his hand steady. When he reached out for it he did so decisively, with a nod to himself. He didn't hesitate but he did steel himself.

It was a good thing he did. The song grew in volume and intensity, and his pulse reached an alarming rate. Desire twitched at his fingertips; a need to open the watch, to understand, to know.

He opened the watch.

Memories like water came flooding out of the fob watch and into John. He was sucked in by the undertow of dark moments as waves of lighter, happier ones crashed over his head. He couldn't breathe. He couldn't think. All he could do was flounder through the depths memory.

He was remembering. His real self was reasserting itself. Every cell of his being was being rewritten and it hurt. Like a phoenix; rebirth through fire. Every emotion on the spectrum rampaged through him. One moment he was ecstatic and triumphant, the next he was frustrated and grieving. Some memories just were; objective facts and knowledge.

Sometimes he saw his own face, watched it change—felt it change. He watched the faces of his companions change, too. The alterations in them were slower, not so sudden and complete, but just as noticeable.

Woven throughout the never ending series of adventures and schemes and crash-and-burn moments were two constant threads. Love, gold and fiery. The other was cold and silvery—pain—searing with the taste of loss.

Everything stopped. Suddenly and before John—who wasn't really John Watson, but had been known as another John more than once—could catch up with the storm raging through his head. He opened his eyes and everything restarted.

He could feel the earth turning, sense the carefully timed careening of the universe through both time and space. He could hear the stars singing. Alien words leapt to the tip of his tongue, complex theories and oceans of knowledge flooded his mind. In his chest two hearts beat out the double rhythm of friends running madly through London.

Friend. His mind snapped to attention at the word. Sherlock, his friend, the brilliant idiot, the hero that didn't believe that heroes existed. Sherlock was dead. Well…

John—who was John even if he wasn't—smiled.

Sherlock might be dead now, but exactly ten days, two hours, and twenty-seven seconds ago he was still falling and every much alive. Time being the beautiful wibbly-wobbly thing that it was, Sherlock was actually dead yet.

And John—who was and wasn't—was a healer, a fixer, the righter of wrongs, and the breaker of every rule in every book on time and space. He could be there at just the right moment and save his friend.

He tore out of 221B and flew down the stairs, straight to 221C, the musty basement flat.

The door was miraculously open. John—who always had been a piece of himself and always would be—burst in. He grinned madly at the old blue police box sitting innocuously in one corner.

John Watson wasn't just a doctor. He was the Doctor. And he was going to save Sherlock Holmes.


End file.
